NEO-PAGANISM: OUT OF THE BROOM CLOSETIt's Not the Episcopal Church AnymoreOctober 2000By Lee Penn

Lee Penn, a health-care information systems consultant in San Francisco, is a member of Our Lady of Fatima Byzantine Church, a parish of the Russian Catholic Church (one of 21 Byzantine Catholic Churches in communion with the Holy See).

Anglo-Catholics within the Episcopal Church of the USA (ECUSA) have long claimed that Anglicanism is one of the three branches of Catholicism, along with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Yet the events at the ECUSA General Convention, held this year from July 5 through 14 in Denver, demonstrate  once again  that this claim is false.

ECUSA is firmly under the control of the apostles of a New Religion, a religion that is not at all Catholic, and Christian in name only. Defenders of traditional Christianity won no clear victories at the Convention, and suffered many defeats. Even more telling than the defeats on the Convention floor were the battles that were lost without any vote on a resolution. Some faithful Christians remain within ECUSA, but the institution  the House of Bishops, most other national and diocesan governing bodies, most seminaries, and most official Anglican publications  has chosen Baal over the Lord.

Here is the body count for orthodox, Catholic-minded Episcopalians as a result of the ECUSA Convention.

The following defeats occurred by vote of Convention:

- The Convention decided to continue the ongoing revision of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (BCP). This is expected to take 12 years, and the new book is likely to be published on the Net and as a CD-ROM. The use of a single, hardcopy prayer book by the entire Church will end; each congregation will be free to create its own liturgy within the expansive limits of the 2012 BCP and the proposed supplemental liturgies. Liturgical innovators will be happy with this change; it will be more difficult for traditionalists to resist innovations if they cannot point to fixed texts and defined rubrics as the standard for worship in ECUSA.

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I had to crack a joke, because I am about to share something that burdens my heart unto desperate grief.

My sibs are ECUSA because RC music is so bad.

So they're longtime ECUSA, very involved in the Church, my sister-in-law is a church music director and does high church traditional music (which gives cover for the heterodox priestesses, I've told her).

My sibs and their spouses, when they were young, were total geeks and nerds. Therefore, they had unchosen virtue--virginity and chastity through lack of opportunity.

BUT their kids, now in their teens, are not nerds and geeks.

Mom and Dad have never said word one to them about virginity and chastity, and they hear the message of the larger culture, and their priestesses preach emotively and breathlessly about embracing diversity through embracing perversity. Their ECUSA church is silent about sexual morality because it doesn't believe in anything more than don't judge. Their church believes in the desolate horror described above.

Last Christmas, my brother-in-law found condoms in the glovebox of his son's car. (Glovebox. I get the irony now!) My sister was very upset. I told her, "What did you expect? Your husband has gone on and on for years about sowing your wild oats, RC celibate priesthood is unnatural because an adult man has to have sex, and he has a stack of Playboys hidden in a bathroom closet known by all who search for TP. Your every action and word and church choice has preached sex sex sex! So why are you surprised?!"

Then she told me why she was upset. We have seen how estrogen-soaked, cow-eyed, in luuuuuuuuv his girlfriend is. You can smell it. She declares her love and he declares it back. My sister is terrified that they aren't using adequate contraception, or that the condom will break, and she'll get pregnant and cause them shame! Ah, there it is! You brag about all the wealthy, powerful, respectable people at your ECUSA church and sneer at the poor, ethnic, and working class RC church; you care more about what your respectable church friends think of you than what God thinks of you! I bet you'll beg her to get an abortion to save your social position. The Gospel of Social Respectability! It has nothing to do with chastity and virginity!

Then she said she was worried about paying child support. I had to explain the law to her--grandparents don't pay child support! So, you're worried about this gold-digger going after your lucre? Ah, serving God or Mammon?

If he really loves her, even in his immature way, her getting pregnant could be the best thing that could happen, if he chooses the right path of holiness and Christian manhood in response: marries her and takes responsibility as a husband and father. Even if it causes economic stress in the short run, it could save his soul.

This girlfriend has decided to go to the same college her son is. They planned to get an apartment together. I asked my sister, would you have even imagined any of us asking our parents to cohabit during college? It was unthinkable, because we knew it was wrong. Sis' objection is that they're stuck together in a lease if they break up.

Respectability in front of wealthy friends; keeping the gold digger away from your money; being stuck in a lease. This is the moral reasoning my beloved sister has sunk into.

I reminded her that what they accept now for this son, they are accepting for the next son, and their youngest child, a daughter. They're watching.

My brother's daughter is beautiful and popular. I'm on her MySpace list and she forgets that I get the group posts and polls she shares with her friends. I don't let on, because it's valuable information. My brother is utterly blind to the path she is quickly traipsing down. She is so pure hearted and earnest and eager to please...she is utterly defenseless against her first cute boyfriend that pressures her. Her friends responses show that they are doing things...and the best predictor is friend behavior.

My sibs are going to be defenseless and afraid against the inevitable; I believe they will be tempted to contracept their daughters; and when that fails, coerce an abortion to save face with their church friends. I see nothing but lust, murder, unholiness, evil, and damaged hearts, bodies, and relationships (romantic and familial) in this scenario unfolding before me.

So Lee Penn's article is so true and scary. I fear that my nephews will become hard hearted women-users, damaging their ability to enter and keep a faithful marriage; I worry that my nieces will be used and broken in heart and body and left unable to trust a man and enter and keep a faithful marriage.

This isn't mere concepts any more. This is about people I love! And I must keep silent because I can't impose my Romanism on them.

All there is is intercessory prayer: guardian angels, St. Maria Goretti, St. Joseph, St. Cecelia and all the Roman virgin martyrs, pray for us!